Unpleasant Dreams
by Riley
Summary: Set in my "Pawn to Queen" universe--- why is Ginny the only one not surprised that Hermione trusts Snape? (I promise--- this is NOT Snape/Ginny! [For one thing, Hermione would kill me.... :> ])


The morning after Harry closed the Chamber of Secrets, Ginny's parents went home. 

She woke up that morning in the infirmary with the bright sunlight streaming through the windows, and heard their voices in the corridor outside. 

"But shouldn't we stay a little while longer?" Her mother's voice, anxious. 

"She's been through a terrible time---" Her father's, strained. 

"Yes." another voice, not quite as familiar: the Headmaster's. "Which is exactly why it's important for her to have time to readjust to life at Hogwarts--- to get used to being here on her own. And there's only a week till the end of term--- she hasn't much time." 

Ginny shivered a little in her bed, not sure she felt about that. On the one hand, she was a big girl, she didn't want anyone thinking she needed her mummy there to hold her hand--- 

But it _had_ been nice last night when her mother had wrapped her fingers around Ginny's as she was trying to fall asleep. 

More whispers, too low for her to hear, then her father's voice--- "All right." 

Then the door to the infirmary opened, and Ginny quickly pretended to be asleep, so that they could wake her.   
  


*****   
  
  
  


After breakfast and a walk around the grounds together, Ginny's parents left. 

That night, her nightmares started.   
  


*****   
  
  
  


It started with the voice: a friendly voice, a young man's voice, whispering to her. She couldn't make out what the words were, exactly, but they were nice, and his voice was _very_ nice--- he was talking to her like she was an adult, a pretty grown-up young woman, and not a silly little girl that Harry Potter would never, ever notice.... 

And then she was walking down a cold, dark passage, and she had a very strong feeling she shouldn't be there, but the voice kept leading her on, and she didn't like to think what the sticky stuff on her hands might be, and the voice said to ignore it. (She remembered vaguely that the owner of the voice was called Tom, and felt scared, but she couldn't think _why_.) 

Then there were two people in front of her, near-identical silhouettes backlit in the dark tunnel, and both of them were begging her to do something--- 

_Kill him, kill him, he's not what you think, he's the enemy. Destroy him, and I'll love you forever._

And one of the voice's was Tom's... and the other was Harry's. 

And she couldn't tell which was which and she took the dagger which in the fashion of dreams was just _there_ in her hand, and _stabbed_--- 

One of the figures fell. 

The other one stepped forward. 

"Good girl, Ginny," Tom whispered, and held out his arms to her. "You've gotten rid of my greatest enemy---" And he held out his arms to her. 

And she went into them, only there was something cold and sharp in her side, and she looked down and saw the hilt of a dagger protruding from her ribs.... 

And below, Harry, lying lifeless in a pool of his own blood. 

Tom's voice came in her ear, the exact same tone as before--- only now it made her cringe, because he said, "Stupid little Ginny... didn't you _want_ to be my consort?" 

She screamed, screamed as she spiraled down into darkness... and then, wakefulness, only the screaming didn't stop.   
  


*****   
  
  
  


After the third night, her roommates complained, and she went down to the hospital wing. 

But even Madam Pomfrey's Dreamless Sleep Potion wasn't enough. Tom still got in. 

And so she lay on her bed at night staring at the ceiling, too afraid to sleep. _So much for getting back to normal._   
  


*** 

Little Ginny Weasley wasn't sleeping again. 

Poppy Pomfrey looked up from her desk at the white-faced girl lying in the bed, her freckles standing out like drops of blood against pale skin. The warm glow of the candlelight on Poppy's desk did nothing to gentle the harshness of the stoic horror on the girl's face. 

The Dreamless Sleep Potion hadn't worked. She was hesitant to try anything stronger, as it could be habit-forming.... 

And Ginny wouldn't tell her what horrible vision could manage to spoil her sleep even under a strong soporific. Nightmares were to be expected, after what she'd been through--- nightmares that strong were nothing Poppy had ever seen before. 

Unbidden, another face floated into her mind, replacing Ginny's haunted visage. An older face, this, but no less troubled, and paler still, with a bandaged left wrist and eyes that regarded the world with a reflection of self-loathing. 

Most people wouldn't compare Ginny Weasley with Severus Snape. But Poppy had seen them both in the same state. 

And she couldn't help but remember the sallow-skinned, dark-eyed boy--- two years younger than the rest--- who'd spent most of his first year in the infirmary. 

Until he'd started putting other students there, with knowledge that bordered on the Dark. 

Not that she could blame the child. Couldn't condemn a boy who'd sat with a stoicism all out of place in such a scrawny little thing while she doctored him. She'd always had the terrible sensation that it was probably the kindest touch he ever got. 

She remembered, with a prickling in her eyes, the time he'd spat out a mouthful of a simple tonic she'd given him. She'd started to snap out a harsh rebuke. 

"There's too much shrivelfig in this," he'd said, his jaw trembling, but his voice resolute. He pressed his lips together tightly once he'd spoken, as if afraid of the results the words would bring. 

She'd taken a sniff of it, then--- moved by the suppressed apprehension in his eyes--- run some simple tests on it. And blessed if the boy hadn't been right--- just that hint too much shrivelfig that would make the healing potion too potent, would make it potentially harmful. 

"How did you know?" she'd asked him, astonished that such a young boy could so readily detect something so subtle. 

He'd shrugged--- started to say something, then looked at her and away, quickly. "I... it's something I'm good at," he'd said, his chin up, as if daring her to contradict him. 

She'd suspected there was more, but she knew that pressing him would only drive him further into his shell... and he came out of it so little. Her infirmary, a place most students regarded as a necessary evil, seemed to be a place he relaxed a little. 

She'd suspected him of skulking about the infirmary for the next half-dozen years--- she'd look up at a sound, only to see a black shadow whisk away in shy haste. She didn't know, of course, and she'd never ask--- not of the withdrawn and solemn boy he'd been, certainly not of the reserved and frigid man he'd become. 

He no longer haunted her domain, of course. But he brewed the various potions she needed without comment, certainly without complaint. The sarcasm that had become his trademark--- almost his only mode of communication--- was nowhere in evidence in their conversations. Neither was anything else. 

As if, Poppy mused, he was incapable of expressing any softer emotion. If he still had them. 

Well, she could use his help again. If anyone would know what to give the child, it was Severus. 

She got to her feet and whisked out the door.   
  


*****   
  
  
  


Severus Snape started as the sharp knock on the door to his office disrupted his blissfully selfless concentration on the potion he was brewing. He'd been taking advantage of his respite from _students_---- much as they from him--- to indulge in what he considered recreation. The opportunity to perform experiments undisturbed by noisy little mouths and clumsy little fingers was _not_ to be wasted. 

Only it seemed he was destined to be disturbed at the only activity that gave him anything like pleasure. 

Maybe if he ignored it, whoever it was would go away. It wasn't as if anyone would _want_ to spend time in his company. He turned back to his cauldron. 

The knocking... grew louder. "Severus, I know you're in there, you never do go anyplace but this dank hole of yours---" 

Madam Pomfrey. Who else _would_ it be?, he scolded himself. Wiping sweat from his forehead--- the cauldrons generated a great deal of steam, one reason why he seldom had a fire in the fireplace--- he went to the door in some haste. "I was under the impression, Madam Pomfrey, that your stores of potions would be sufficient to last you until the end of term." He tried to ensure that she never had a shortage. 

Pomfrey regarded him with the sort of wry exasperation she'd given him as a student. "It's not that, Severus---" 

"Then what?" 

"Ginny Weasley. The poor child's having nightmares, and the Dreamless Sleep Potion's not having any effect." 

Snape started to snap a response--- then the name registered. "She's the one that... Riddle took into the Chamber, isn't she?" 

"Yes." Madam Pomfrey regarded him expectantly. "Is that reason enough to disturb your splendid isolation?" 

"Yes." Judging by her face, the answer surprised her as much as it did him. "I'll see what I can do." He turned back to his cauldron. 

"Hadn't you better see her before you start mixing anything up?" 

"Oh, assuredly---" he couldn't resist, and turned a bland look on Pomfrey. "But this concoction will explode if I don't finish---" 

She left in satisfying haste. 

Leaving him to ponder his own burst of madness.... 

*** 

The shadows lengthened, and Ginny shivered in her bed. 

Night. And the dreams. _What's wrong with me?_

She looked up at the sound of footsteps, expecting Madam Pomfrey, come to give her another useless dose of Dreamless Sleep Potion--- 

And started, smothering a little cry, when she saw Professor Snape sweeping across the infirmary, his eyes... on her. 

Well, she thought with a little corner of her mind that sometimes surprised her with its humor, maybe the image of Snape bearing down on her would be enough to drive... Tom... out of her head. And, horrible as Snape was, as nightmare-monsters went, she'd take him over Tom any day. 

She pushed herself upright against the head board as Snape came to stand over her bed. His face was in shadow, backlit, but she thought his expression was... softer... than usual. 

"Madam Pomfrey tells me the Dreamless Sleep Potion she's been giving you has had no effect." There was no mistaking the voice--- it was a far less harsh tone than the one he used in class. Not that you could exactly call it kind. 

For a moment, she was confused--- then her mind cleared and her spirits lifted. Of course--- Snape _was _the Potions Master. If the Dreamless Sleep Potion wasn't working for her, it would be his job to find something that would. 

"No, sir." 

"It wasn't a question." The dry snap in his voice was familiar from class, but still softened. For a moment he regarded her, his arms folded. "Now, as there is no medical reason why the potion shouldn't work---" her heart plummeted--- "we must assume another cause." He made a gesture with his wand--- odd to think of Snape carrying one, the way he'd dismissed them as "foolish" the first day of class--- and one of the chairs around the walls of the room slid across the floor to her bedside. 

He sat beside her. "And what, Miss Weasley, do you think that could be?" 

_That I was an idiot. That I almost got a whole bunch of people killed. That I treated the most horrible Dark wizard in years as a friend. _But she couldn't say it--- not even to her parents, not to her friends, and certainly not to the forbidding and sarcastic Potions Master. Why, before this, the only time he'd ever spoken to her was to take a point here and there off Gryffindor for some trivial fault (though only Harry seemed to merit imaginary misdemeanors)! She blushed and looked down. "I--- I don't know---" 

Though she couldn't see it, as she was trying to pretend that the coverlet was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen in her life--- she _felt_ his eyebrow arch. "Really? Then who would?" 

For a moment, she felt her tongue tie into knots under his gimlet gaze--- then, from somewhere she hadn't known she had, she marshaled a reserve of Gryffindor courage. Raising her eyes from the bed, she managed to look at his face, though she couldn't quite lock eyes with him. "M-maybe Madam Pomfrey would?" 

There was no mistaking the slight twitch of the thin lips. "Really?" he asked again. "Somehow, I don't think so." his voice, she noticed, was still very soft--- almost, you could say, gentle, if that wasn't stretching. Then one long finger came under her chin, tipped it, so that not meeting his eyes would be an act of cowardice. "Do you, Miss Weasley?" 

She gulped, feeling almost mesmerized by those dark glittering eyes. Arrested... but---- she realized with a shock--- not at all frightened. There was nothing cruel about the often frightening Potions Master now. 

And it wasn't possible, she found, to lie, not under that intent gaze. "N-no." 

As if the word had been a spell, he released her from both his gaze and his touch. "Very good, child," he said, still in that quiet voice. 

Now that she was free of his touch, she found a little of that courage again. "Y-you seem to know a lot a-about---" He was looking at her again, and that eyebrow arched; she faltered. "About... this...." she stammered to a halt, cursing her attempt at bravery, looking away again. 

For a moment he was silent, then, very softly, "Yes, child, I do." Again, that long finger tipped her chin up. "Would you like to know what I know?" 

It could have sounded threatening... but strangely, it was anything but. _Does he know... how to get rid of the nightmares? How to get rid of... Tom?_ "Y-yes." 

Again, like magic, he released her. "Then tell me what you know." 

At first, his words didn't make sense, and she could only stare at him. And then they fell into place, and she knew what he was asking... and could only stare again. 

And then, suddenly, without knowing how or why, only knowing that the mind behind those glittering eyes would accept her confidence, knowing that this honesty was the price expected in return for whatever help he could offer--- the words came. 

She spoke as she only ever had to Tom, spoke her heart without censoring herself--- only this time, she knew the risk she was taking, knew what it could cost her. And yet she spoke. Because she needed to. 

Spoke about needing someone who was just hers. Spoke about how Tom had been the perfect friend. About the mounting horror as she began to realize that she was the one committing the attacks. Cursed herself for not realizing what was in her diary, for her own stupidity in trusting him so blindly. Sobbed as for the first time she relived being dragged by an unseen hand down into the Chamber of Secrets. Choked out her agony at the ordeal she'd put Harry through. 

And finally, whispered the nightmares. The dreams that she still belonged, in some secret corner of her mind, to Tom Marvolo Riddle... who was Lord Voldemort. 

Through her whole rambling confession, he listened impassively, uncritically, and attentively. And silently, which above all else was what she needed. No soothing, no "there, there" and "don't cry" like her mother. No half-choked-back rebukes like her father. No fussing like Madam Pomfrey or bewildered annoyance like her classmates. Just listening. 

And when she was done, he was silent still, just handed her a handkerchief from the bedside table as she tried to get her breath back. 

She blew her nose and mopped her eyes, managed to get a few deep breaths. With the oxygen came awareness... and embarrassment. "I--- I'm sorry---" 

"You've done enough apologizing, I think." They sat in silence for a long moment, then Snape spoke again. "You've told me what you know, as I asked--- now, let me tell you what I know, as I promised." 

Intrigued in spite of herself, Ginny looked up at him. 

Snape met her gaze for a moment, then, just as she had earlier, he looked down at the coverlet. One long finger traced the pattern of the quilting on the edge of the bed. "I know--- or knew--- a boy, a little older than yourself," he began. His was voice dispassionate, low and quiet and just the tiniest bit hesitant. "This young boy was... very bright, Miss Weasley, bright enough that he started here at Hogwarts two years early. But _bright_---" a mocking emphasis on the word--- "was all he was. He wasn't attractive, or charming, or even particularly nice. Just very intelligent... and very much alone. 

"But not completely alone. There were a few people who found him, found his intelligence... useful." His lip twisted into something that wasn't a smile and wasn't a sneer, an expression she'd never seen before. "He was grateful, this boy, to be of use, grateful to have some kind of belonging." He looked up at her suddenly, startling her. "Can you think, child, who those 'people' might be?" 

It didn't take her a moment. "Dark wizards?" 

"Right in one." He looked back down at the coverlet, his finger resuming its restless tracing. "They watched him for several years, and when he was old enough--- fifteen was old enough for them, as he'd finished his schooling--- they asked him to join their cause, and he did. He did it---" Snape's voice caught in his throat--- "not because he believed in it, or in them; not because he even agreed with them. He did it simply because they had asked, and they were the only ones who had bothered to ask." 

He took a deep breath, still not looking at her. Ginny, however, couldn't tear her eyes from him, from that expressionless face and the haunted shadows in his eyes. "He joined them, and for a time--- for several years--- he did whatever they asked." Again, that not-sneer. "It wasn't very difficult, or very taxing, for the most part. Brewing potions, crafting curses--- things he was good at, things he'd have done anyway. He told himself it didn't matter how his mind was being used, it didn't matter that most of the men and women he'd allied himself with---" the sneer in full--- "were bullies and brutes, cruel and shallow and concerned only with their own gain and their depraved pleasures. It didn't matter... because at least he had somewhere to belong. 

"And then, one day---" a thin, sardonic smile--- "the details are a little graphic for your ears, child, but it suffices to say that one day he got to... participate in some of the horrors he'd helped to bring about, got to watch the human suffering that his knowledge made possible. And he realized that he was no better than his selfish, shallow compatriots--- for how could it be anything but the height of selfishness to ally himself with such monsters, simply because he had no one--- because no one but monsters would want him?" 

Snape's voice shook on the last phrase, and he turned his head, just slightly, so that his face was completely in shadow. 

And Ginny knew, suddenly, just who that brilliant, unloved child had been. 

"What... what did--- he--- do?" she asked, wanting to know and wanting more than that to call him back from his dark thoughts. 

He started slightly. "Eh--- yes. He went, child, to Headmaster Dumbledore--- to Dumbledore, because he was perhaps the only person in those dark times who could be trusted to hear the story of someone connected with the Dark, listen to the entire tale, before they killed that Dark wizard outright. And because---" something harsh and bitter and self-mocking came into his eyes--- "because he knew from his student days that the Headmaster was capable of forgiving just about anything, if he wanted." 

Ginny wondered at Snape's tone. It didn't make sense for him to be so bitter if _he'd_ been the one who'd had the Headmaster's forgiveness in the past--- but if not him, then who? 

"So he arranged a meeting with Dumbledore, and told him... everything. Everything he knew about the Dark wizards, everything that he himself had done. And when he'd finished his tale, he fully expected the Headmaster to send for the Aurors to take him off to Azkaban. 

"But Dumbledore had---" sarcastic smirk--- "a better _use_ for him than that. He told the young man that he could redeem himself--- become a spy for the forces of light, a double agent. Risk his life opposing the darkness... in order to save what might loosely be termed his soul." 

Snape stared into the shadows for a long moment, then looked down at her intently. "He redeemed himself," he repeated, "After having embraced the darkness knowingly. After killing scores of people, knowing that his every action meant harm to others... after all that, he still found that he could be worthy of other people's... acceptance. Their forgiveness, even." 

For a moment, they sat in silence, while the question burned on Ginny lips--- finally forced its way out. "Did you ever forgive yourself?" 

Snape started at that, his eyes snapping fire--- then, of a sudden, he relaxed, even made a sound that might have been a chuckle. "Ah, the celebrated Gryffindor courage, bordering on foolhardiness--- though the wit, I think, is all your own. But then---" something that might of been a twinkle in his eyes--- "I wasn't very subtle, I suppose. So much for my days as a spy." 

Silence again, and Ginny gathered up that Gryffindor courage. "You didn't answer my question." 

"No, child, I didn't." He looked up at her. "That's a question you'll have to answer for yourself." They sat in silence for a moment, as Ginny mulled over what he'd told her. 

It should have surprised her to learn that one of her teachers had been a Dark wizard... but somehow, it didn't. This was _Snape_, after all. And he'd come back into the light, of his own choice. 

His hand was still tracing the quilting--- a respectful distance from the lump that was her body under the covers. Impulsively, she reached out and covered it with hers. He started, looking up at her with something like his usual sharpness. 

"Thank you." The sharp look faded from his eyes, and he almost smiled. 

Ginny removed her hand, and they sat again in silence for a moment, then Snape spoke. "I had best be going, then--- Madam Pomfrey is most displeased at having been turned out of her own infirmary, and I promised I would not stay a moment longer than necessary." For the first time, Ginny noticed that the mediwitch had in fact been absent during their discussion--- probably the first time in the history of Hogwarts she'd been thrown out of her infirmary. 

Snape got to his feet, a tall black shadow over her bed, oddly comforting. "I trust, Miss Weasley," he said sternly, "that you will keep our little discussion _between_ ourselves?" 

She nodded, surprised that he'd even ask--- though after a moment's thought, she supposed she could hardly blame him for wanting to be certain! "Of course." 

"Very good." He swept away from the bed, his cloak billowing out behind him. 

At the doorway, he turned. "Good night, Miss Weasley. And---" something that might have been a smile, though she couldn't see for the shadows--- "pleasant dreams?" 

She couldn't help but smile. "Yes sir. And--- the same to you." 

He lingered a moment, then left. 

Ginny stared after him, hardly noticing when Madam Pomfrey bustled in a moment later. She let the mediwitch tuck her in, let Pomfrey's half-affectionate rant about Snape's manners wash over her. 

And that night, for the first time in months, she did have pleasant dreams. 


End file.
